Tough times at Citi CenterTHERE NEEDS to be a course correction at the Citi Performing Arts Center. The nonprofit center has suffered from financial troubles and made tin-eared decisions that have cut programming and raised questions about its operations. Center president Josiah Spaulding is at least part of the problem. Now it falls to the center’s board of directors to figure out how to move the organization toward greater transparency as well as prosperity.

Struggling Citi Center seeks collaborationsThe Citi Performing Arts Center has launched talks with .... local arts and culture groups with the aim of merging or partnering with them.....Martha H. Jones, president of the Celebrity Series of Boston, also has questions. For a decade, she and Spaulding collaborated to bring prominent dance companies to the Wang Theatre. Last fall, Spaulding told Jones the Center would no longer partner with the Celebrity Series for the project.

The Citi Performing Arts Center, responding to criticism of its spending practices and the decision to cut back its free Shakespeare run on Boston Common, yesterday sent a more than 1,200-word letter from its board to supporters, donors, and media members defending its practices.

Citi Center Board chairman John William Poduska Sr. met this week with a representative of Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office after being contacted, the center confirmed. It was unclear whether the attorney general intends to launch a full investigation, and Coakley’s office would neither confirm nor deny the status of an inquiry.

Arts groups get $16.7m from state for projectsCiti Center request is tabled due to concern about its spending

In a move hailed by arts leaders across Massachusetts, the state’s new Cultural Facilities Fund yesterday allocated an unprecedented $16.7 million worth of grants for building projects to more than 60 arts and cultural organizations throughout the state. But noticeably absent from the list of recipients was the Citi Performing Arts Center.

The grants stem from last year’s vote by the Legislature to create the Cultural Facilities Fund to spur economic growth via improvements to the state’s cultural infrastructure.

The initial MCC panel voted earlier this summer to give the Citi Performing Arts Center (formerly the Wang Center for the Performing Arts) $600,000. But in August, after the Globe reported on programming cutbacks, financial struggles, and the decision to give president Josiah Spaulding Jr. a $1.2 million bonus, the Citi Center grant was tabled by an advisory committee.

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[Robert L. Culver, president and chief executive of MassDevelopment] said that the Citi Center grant, which would have been used to update the fire alarm systems at the Shubert Theatre and add accessible bathrooms at the Wang Theatre, was tabled because of concerns over the Citi Center's spending practices.

"If there are such questions out there, we said, let's just suspend judgment until we find out if where there's smoke, there's fire," Culver said, adding that there is a chance the grant could be approved later this year.

Two rebuffs for Citi Center in its merger talksFirst Night and Young Audiences of Massachusetts ... have formally cut off talks with the Citi Center.

In explaining the decision by their respective boards, leaders of the organizations cited a range of concerns, from the $1.2 million bonus paid to Citi Center president and CEO Josiah Spaulding Jr. last year to the impact that bad publicity from a series of Globe articles about the Center could have on fund-raising.

Boston Ballet still performs at the Wang, now called something like Citi Performing Arts Center Wang Theater. The Shubert is the other theater in the arts center, but after experimenting with some performances there for a year or two all BB performances are back at the Wang. With the notable exception of Nutcracker, which is performed at the Opera Center since Spaulding and crew chose to have the traveling Rockettes and another production alternate at the Wang instead of the ballet during the holiday season.

I've been told, though I don't know if it is true, that Boston Ballet is the only major US ballet company that doesn't perform in a "purpose built" theater - that is, one designed for dance. It would be wonderful to have a new, accessible theater for dance, but it probably won't happen in my lifetime. Meanwhile, regardless of what we might think about the Citi PAC management, we have to hope the Wang stays viable.

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